Sunday, March 31, 2013

Month 39 Status Report

We're getting down to the final slog here. I have exactly 160 films left to review, and I freely admit that a part of me is starting to look ahead to future projects. I lost some focus in March, reviewing only 22 films from The List, which is much less than I would have preferred. Oh well.

April, of course, is another month, and a chance to refocus myself on finishing what I started. The problem I'm starting to have is an interesting one--with a much smaller list to deal with, my choices are a lot more limited, and it becomes a question of availability more than anything else. Expect the number of non-List reviews to increase slowly in the months ahead to reflect this. I'm hoping to keep up a pace of 5-7 List films per week, but I'm not sure how much longer the availability of films will allow that. I'm pretty much stripped my local library of necessary films, and have come close to doing the same with two other libraries I use. That's the biggest challenge right now.

My goal is always 25 minimum, so 22 feels short. It was a hard month with work, and even when I got some time off, there were too many other things to do to really spend time with a film the way I wanted.

I've been able to avoid the problem of squeezing from waiting for the Netflix disks to arrive by also having located other films online. I would have watched them anyway for free via Netflix. I delete them off my computer after I watch them, although I now wonder if this was wise. Having these other films has saved me multiple times recently (even today) when Netflix suddenly removes previously available films from circulation. In a few cases I've luckily had a copy available that I could add to the Compendium. I'm literally doing that right now with Stella Dallas as I write this. It just went unavailable. So did the 1963 version of The Nutty Professor. I've tracked down a copy and am in the process of seeing if it is valid. (Same thing with the Oscar Best Picture Nominees I am trying to see. I just found out today that two of my remaining films had gone unavailable and I had to track them down online. Netflix must have cleaned house after the first quarter of this year.)

All of this is to say that your Magic Flashdrive can have some more magic added to it, if you want it to. I haven't checked your list of remaining entries, but I'm sure you and I still have many in common and that means I might have saved some of those off for myself.

Update: I checked and I have 17 films available that you have not reviewed yet, not counting the ones you should already have on your Magic Flashdrive (i.e. The Fourth Man), the ones available via Netflix Instant (i.e. The Dead), and the ones that I already let you know I own on DVD (i.e. Amadeus). I also noted at least five more of your unreviewed films that I literally just deleted during the month of March because I saw them for the first time myself. I checked my Recycle Bin and unfortunately they are permanently gone.

You may want to drop me an email on all of this. (You may be asking why I didn't do that in the first place myself. The answer is very simple: it didn't occur to me.)

Actually, at this point everything I need to see is available to me in some way--it's merely a question of when it's available. About half of what I have left I can get easily through NetFlix, but since I get just a single disc at a time, I'm pretty much limited to two per week. So, I get what I can of those films from libraries, plus the flashdrive, streaming, Hulu, and my own collection.

When I started doing this, I didn't have a NetFlix account. Maybe the first six months or so I did everything through libraries and what I owned. Interlibrary loan works; I just need to plan a bit more carefully in the months ahead. I'm not terribly worried. Four per week puts me at done by the end of the year (figuring on five per week after the next edition is released), and I'm still able to do more than that right now.

I may well take you up on the offer for Oscar films, though. I know there are a bunch that are not available traditionally, although I haven't spent a great deal of time looking through the list at this point.

I get four at a time from Netflix. I had three for years, but I bumped it to four when I got serious about working on the list. I have one selection (separate queue) dedicated to just the Oscar nominees, and in my main queue I try to keep it balanced so I get two 1001 movies and one "regular" movie at a time. I keep all the "long wait" and "very long wait" 1001 selections at the top because I've found that those are the ones that tend to go completely unavailable and that Netflix will sometimes ship one of them as an extra disk as a "sorry" when it does become available.

In regards to the Oscar Best Picture Nominees I discovered 49 of the 503 to be unavailable. I've tracked down 44 of them. Of the remaining 5, one is presumed lost, two others are available only if you physically visit the UCLA film archive, and two I am still searching for (1931's Trader Horn and 1941's Hold Back the Dawn - which TCM showed in February and I missed it.)

I've saved another 15 otherwise available Best Picture Nominees that I haven't watched and deleted yet. I also own every Best Picture winner except for Cavalvcade, which isn't available on DVD, but which I have an electronic copy of.

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About Me

I'm a father of two, married for more than 26 years. I teach English composition and communication at the college level and freelance as a copy editor and proofreader--something now supplemented with basic design and layout at the behest of my talented and very busy wife. I have written a scad of books (all non-fiction and completely unimpressive). I love movies, and watch several every week. My love of movies and a desire to review them has led me to create this page.
Please feel free to contact me at sjhoneywell(at)comcast.net